Cleaning a vintage razor with a Dremel tool wire brush?

I'm just getting into buying and restoring vintage razors and was wondering if anyone has had any luck or experience using a Dremmel tool with a wire brush to remove surface rust from a razor. I've used one for other items but never a razor. The reason I would be afraid if this is building up too much heat near the blade's edge and the thin metal may discolour very easily. I've searched in the wiki and forum trying to find different methods and one of the best I've seen is using a media vibrator but It still seems you would need to use a more aggressive means to beging removing the bulk of rust. The only drawback with that is you have to unpin the razor from the scale when using a media vibrator. But, I guess it's always a good practice to repin a razor when restoring it. Any feed back on this would be well appreciated. Thanks.

You can use the dremel, but be very light and always, ALWAYS, work from the spine to the edge, in a way that if the razor gets pulled it will not be thrown toward you. If you stop from time to time and check the temp I doubt you'll have trouble with messing up the temper....

First let's pull this post into the Workshop section so it will get the attention it needs...
Then I will get you some more info too...

This thread is at the top of the Workshop all the time Max and I try and keep it full of the best of the best for "restoration information"

http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...wers-here.html

I myself do not recommend Dremels for anyone, let alone people that are new to razor restoration, yes they can work, but they have the potential to destroy a razor so fast it is scary....(many things we do to razors can harm them, and you)

We have a saying here in the workshop "Rush a Restore, Wreck a Razor" relax take your time and ease into cleaning up the blade I seriously recommend starting with hand-sanding at first...

A friend of mine would keep a glass of water with ice cubes in front of him and polish with the Dremel and dip the blade in the ice water every so often. A couple of members have made magnetic holding jigs with aluminum heat sinks that are supposed to protect the blade from overheating and hold it securely.

If they are currently selling any they would be in the classifieds under misc. I don't know about the wire brush though. I have seen guys use felt wheels with polish. Lynn demonstrates polishing with a Dremel on his DVD as well.

I always use the Dremel with stainless wire brushes to clean rust and crud out of the monkey tail and tang areas of a dirty razor, they work great! I would not get a coarse stainless brush anywhere near the edge of a razor, for fear of chipping or breaking it. For rusty blades, my experience has been that using steel wool, running water and detergent first gets the red rust off. If I want to do further cleaning, I use coarse to fine grades of wet sandpaper with a cork as a sanding block to remove the oxidation right down to the blade, or as often happens, the pitting under the rust. In extreme cases 120 grit sandpaper gets all the rust and very light pitting off the blade. The dremel comes into play again with coarse brown buffing pads followed by finer purple ones. BKratchmer gave good advice about never buffing from the edge toward you...the result could be at best a broken or chipped blade, at worst it would fly at your fingers, face or throat! The dremel direction of rotation should NEVER be coming toward you while you are near the edge! Also be careful when working around the toe of the blade-it is very easy to flip the blade or break it. It is best to always hold the blade firmly in place while buffing. Finally, the dremel, with felt pads and either MAAS or Mothers Billet Metal Polish gives a nice mirror finish. I am not an expert, but have gotten good results using a combination of Dremel and sanding. My opinions only, YMMV of course. Hope this helps.

If the blade is really bad (with deep pitting) I would suggest investing in a flap wheel for your Dremel.

If not, I have had pretty good results with buffing puffs. They come in various "grits" but they will get pretty hot quickly if you are not careful. Light pressure and patience is critical.

This is only for blades that are REALLY bad. Hand-sanding is more time consuming but will yield better results and is far safer for you and the blade.

As mentioned, ""Rush a Restore, Wreck a Razor"

Be damn careful, its all to easy to screw a blade up with a Dremel.Handsanding may take longer but will give a more satisfactory result and is far less likely to eat your blade and spit chunks back at you.